254th Anniversary of the “Gaspee” Raid

Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor every year around this time to remark upon an event in our pathway toward revolution.

As we close in on the semiquincentennial celebration of our day of independence-July 4, 1776-I want to take this Chamber back 4 more years than that to June 9, 1772, when the first blow was struck of armed conflict between the American Colonies and Great Britain's fleet.

The story begins with the arrival on Narragansett Bay of His Majesty's officer Lieutenant William Duddingston, the captain of a revenue cutter named the Gaspee. Lieutenant Duddingston's task was to police the commerce going in and out of Narragansett Bay, and he went about his task with bumptious, arrogant zeal, which included arrogant exchanges of correspondence with the Colonial Governor and Chief Justice and unnecessary harassment and interference with colonial shipping on Narragansett Bay.

Before we get to June and the events that I am going to describe, I will take a quick sidebar to one of his first exploits in February. He had only gotten there in January. By February, Captain Duddingston of the Gaspee seized a ship called the Fortune, and he seized its cargo. He had the ship and the cargo transferred up to Boston, where His Majesty's government sold the cargo and sold the ship and transferred the funds to the exchequer of Great Britain.

What they had not appreciated was that one of the owners of the Fortune was a Rhode Islander named Nathanael Greene, who had not beforehand been much involved in the Committees of Correspondence and the spirit of rebellion. But the seizure of his vessel put him into what he called a spirit of resentment that changed the course of his life. As students of history will know, he went on to become the chief operating officer of the Revolutionary War, the top lieutenant to George Washington, the guy who made the supplies and the work- everything-happen.

He was important in that role, but he constantly begged General Washington for a real command. Ultimately, General Washington relented, though it wounded him to lose the administrative capability of General Nathanael Greene. General Greene went down to run the southern campaign of the Revolutionary War, whose motto, according to General Greene, was: We fight, we get beat, we rise up, and we fight again.

Sure enough, he did. He fought over and over and over again, never winning a battle but definitively winning the war in one of the first real examples of guerrilla-type conflict the world had seen. They were used to staged, matched armies in colorful regalia, standing at a reasonable distance from each other and firing at each other with muskets and with cannons. The entire campaign in the South was a guerrilla campaign in which they fought, they got beat, they got away, they rose up, and they fought again.

The result was that General Cornwallis, commanding the British Army, wrote to his wife: That damn Greene is more dangerous than Washington.

He was a very significant participant in the victory that America achieved and the independence that we asserted on the Fourth of July, 1776. He doesn't get the credit he deserves because he spent so much of the war facilitating the work of General Washington, but historians know what a remarkable job he did running that southern campaign. You can trace that all the way back to Lieutenant William Duddingston and the Gaspee seizing his ship the Fortune and lighting up that spirit of resentment.

So scroll forward to June 9, 1772. Lieutenant Duddingston is still helming the Gaspee, and the Gaspee is still harassing Rhode Islanders. A June day on Narragansett Bay is a beautiful thing to behold, and in the sparkling light of that wonderful day, a little ship called the Hannah, bearing cargo, was sailing on its way up to Providence, which was one of the maritime centers of the Colonies, and the Gaspee gave chase, seeking to arrest the Hannah and seize its cargo and send it off to Boston the way the Fortune's had been sent. Only Captain Lindsey of the Hannah decided: To hell with that. I am not going to surrender. I am going to run for it.

He sailed away up Narragansett Bay with the Gaspee in chase.

Along the Warwick shore, about halfway up Narragansett Bay, the Pawtuxet River comes into the bay, and, as rivers do, it carries silt and dirt from the river washing through into the bay. When the river slows down and the water goes out into the larger bay, the silt and the sand fall to the bottom, and there is a little barrier along the bottom of the bay left by the river.

Well, Captain Lindsey had sailed there quite a lot, and like any good captain, he had a pretty good idea of how deeply his vessel drew. He sailed over the sandbar off of Namquid Point and continued on his merry way in the sparkling midday of June 9, 1772. Behind him came the bigger, heavier, lumbering Gaspee, and it floundered and stuck on that sandbar. The tide was falling, so the Gaspee was going no place until the tide fell all the way to low tide and came all the way back up to the tide level at which it foundered and then raised farther enough to lift the vessel off where it was stuck.

When the Hannah got to Providence, her captain told the story of what had taken place. He described to the worthies on the Providence shore that the Gaspee-this dread vessel that had caused so much nuisance and cost to Rhode Islanders-was stuck.

That night, Rhode Islanders rode down from Providence to the Gaspee at night in longboats with muffled oars. As they approached the stuck Gaspee, Abraham Whipple, who was the local sheriff and was in the party, yelled out that he was there to arrest the captain of the vessel and arrest the vessel. Duddingston was not about to put up with that, so he called his crew up to the deck, called them to arms, and a battle ensued between the longboats surrounding the Gaspee and the Gaspee itself.

As the Rhode Islanders swarmed onto the Gaspee, among the gunshots was one that struck Captain Duddingston, so, injured, he surrendered his crew, and the Rhode Islanders captured-his rank was lieutenant; his position was captain. Captain Duddingston. Lieutenant Duddingston. They took him ashore with the crew and turned them all over to be held prisoner and detained. Then they went back out onto the bay, out to the stricken and stranded Gaspee, and they set her alight. When a ship burns, particularly a ship of that era, whose rope is covered with tar, whose rigging is canvas, whose structure is wood, with so many parts that are varnished and oiled, the combustion is rapid. And, as the Gaspee burned, the fire reached the Gaspee's powder magazine. And, when the fire reached the powder magazine, the gunpowder did what gunpowder does, and it blew the Gaspee to smithereens.

It is now about 4 in the morning on June 10, 1772. More than 4 years would go by before the Fourth of July Declaration of Independence; and, interestingly, more than a year and a half would go by until another event-that is much more prominent even though much less brave and significant-took place, and that is the so-called Boston Tea Party.

Now, I have nothing against my friends from Massachusetts, but they got drunk; they went onboard a civilian ship. They seized bales of tea, and they pushed the tea bales into Boston Harbor. Well, bully for them, but well more than a year earlier, Rhode Islanders had seized a vessel of Her Majesty's Navy; had captured the crew; and had blown the damned boat up, and I think that deserves a little credit. So I come here every year. When I go home this weekend, we will be marching in the Gaspee Days Parade that goes by Namquid Point-now called Gaspee Point-where an annual celebration takes place.

And I want to make sure that all of the pages who are here know that, when they hear about the Boston Tea Party, they should know to scroll back 18 months to a bolder, more violent, and more remarkable engagement by Rhode Island.

The aftermath was immediate. King George was furious. He demanded that everyone involved be hanged, and he sent commissioners to come and root out who the miscreants were who had participated in the raid on the Gaspee. And here is what is interesting. There are probably five long boatloads of Rhode Islanders-enough to overwhelm the crew of the Gaspee-and enormous rewards were offered for people to cooperate and testify against their comrades-against all that pressure from the King, against all that inducement of reward. In Rhode Island, no one squealed. The commissioners went home emptyhanded. The nooses hung empty. That was the second conclusion. The blowing up of the vessel was one thing. The solidarity of not yielding to testify against their fellow colonists was the other.

So I will read my poem about this event with apologies to the ride of Paul Revere.

Listen, my colleagues, and you shall see

How Rhode Islanders blew up the dread Gaspee.

Great Britain was fearsome, she ruled the sea,

But Rhode Islanders burned with the fire to be free.

So when George sent his frigate to tax our coast,

And its arrogant captain was heard to boast

That he'd soon have Rhode Island under his sway,

[Well] a course was set for a fateful day.

Narragansett Bay sparkled bright and blue

June 9 of 1772,

The trading ship Hannah was making her way

With cargo for Providence that fine day.

King George's Gaspee pursued in chase,

But the Hannah decided to give her a race.

Away fled the Hannah with wind in her sails,

As the Gaspee's cannon fired from its rails.

Evading the Gaspee's cannon balls,

The Hannah sailed for the Namquid shoals.

Fast and light, Hannah crossed the shallow,

But when the Gaspee attempted to follow,

She ran aground on the Warwick shore,

In a falling tide, and could move no more.

That night dark longboats with muffled oars,

Came slipping quietly down the shore,

To rid our Bay of the dread Gaspee,

And show old King George that Rhode Island [would be] free.

The battle was fierce off Warwick Neck.

When the gunsmoke cleared from the Gaspee's deck,

The Rhode Islanders had her as their prize,

And her crew bound up in chains and ties.

When the crew was ashore, Pawtuxet's Rangers

Assured they'd present us no further danger.

Back to the Bay, in the dark of the night,

Went the Gaspee Raiders to set her alight.

The fire spread through the Raiders' prize,

'Til a blast filled the Narragansett Bay skies.

The fire had reached the Gaspee's magazines,

And her gunpowder blew her to smithereens.

Away sped the Raiders into the dark,

Leaving in the embers freedom's spark.

I want their names!" King George demanded,

And ordered the Raiders be apprehended.

But his call for hangings came to naught:

His nooses hung empty; no charge was brought;

Because never a traitorous tale was told.

Rhode Island stood steady and silent and bold.

The spark that was struck in the Gaspee Raid

Lit a flame that still burns in our hearts today.

And the lesson from then is a lesson now,

That every American still will avow.

However majestic your powers be,You should heed our warning: don't tread on me.

I yield the floor.